A hypothesis about the origin of the golem legend, from Old European Jewries by David Philipson (1894):
From a list of Yiddish proverbs and sayings collected in St. Louis (1920):
A description of the golem, in which the Maharal is named "Rabbi Bezalel [sic] Loew," the golem is a dwarf, and the magic word which automates him is G O L E M, from a book called The follies of science at the court of Rudolph II: 1576-1612 by Henry Carrington Bolton (1904). Unfortunately it can't be bothered to cite sources or give a bibliography.
Here's a great article on Artifical Life by J.D. Eisenstein in his Topics of the Day in the Talmud series, in New Era Illustrated 7 (1905)
Writing in that same magazine, is Gotthard Deutsch. He recounts what he was told about the resting place of the golem, by the shammas of the Altneu Schule, and based on personal knowledge, what the fate of the Maharal's kiddush cup would be:
